Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-On Trade Unions and the International 1871

Markin comment:

Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
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International Workingmen’s Association 1871

On Trade Unions and the International
Abstract

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Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: Engels, from minutes of General Council, October 31 1871;
First Published: in The General Council of the First International 1864-72: Minutes, Progress Publishers, 1962-;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.


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Citizen Engels said it [could] not be maintained for an instant that the Trades Unions were branches; the branches had to submit their rules to the General Council for approval, while the Unions framed their own rules without any control being exercised over them; besides, they took action when they pleased without consulting the Association. Another thing, they had not paid so much per member, but had contributed in lump sums.